“Strengthening Government–Academic Cooperation in Public Policy”

Abstract:
This talk will consider the lessons learned over the last three years from a joint Australian Government—Australian National University initiative aimed at enhancing public policy capacity (the HC Coombs Policy Forum). The key features of this collaboration are the emphasis on partnership projects that link government officials and academic expertise, together with an explicit emphasis on exploratory and experimental work of potential utility to public policy. This modus operandi requires an appetite for risk and the ability to manage these risks effectively. The talk will cover practical aspects of how the unit's distinctive mission is being delivered and how it is evolving. It will also highlight the following conceptual points that emerge from experience to date.

• The importance of using government-academic collaboration to develop and refine the analytical methods used to make sense of evidence within government. Particular attention will be paid to the use of structured hypothesis testing approaches in this context.
• Governments’ role as uncertainty and risk manager of last resort and its implications for government-academic collaboration.
• The role of theory in helping governments to speculate about the (as yet) unknown on the basis of the evidence we currently have and the implications of this function for government-academic collaboration.

Sustained collaboration between government and academia is important because it allows for a far more effective and analytically robust articulation of evidence-based policymaking. Both parties are able to learn from each other more easily and, as a result, co-evolve their capabilities in ways that can address these important and demanding challenges.